Who's weirder
by russianbluecat
Summary: A call is made to dispatch and Renard sends Nick and Hank to check it out.


'Burkhardt. Griffin.' The call came from the Captain, who stood in his office doorway.

Both detectives stood and walked over quickly, glad to stretch as they had been doing paperwork all day. As much as it was nice to have closed their last case, and have the Portland residents be tolerant enough towards each other that there was no new murder to investigate, it did make for a boring day.

'Seeing as we're not too busy at the moment, Captain Starke asked if we could help out. He's already got all his uniforms out on calls.' Maybe the Portland residents weren't being all _that _tolerant of each other then.

Renard glanced at the dispatch report he held in his hand. 'A call came in of some sort of gathering on the edge of the forest. The message was rather garbled but dispatch caught something about a giant rabbit and it all being 'very wrong'. Could be anything from trapping to bestiality really but someone needs to check it out.'

'People playing dress up? Stag or hen do?' Hank suggested hopefully. He smirked at Nick who tried to smile back but was rather busy praying it wasn't going to be what it sounded like. Mainly a group of wesen who had gone to woge in the forest and been seen.

'Let's go and have a look' was all he said.

'Area's remote so report in when you get there and again no later than an hour after that.'

Renard seemed to hesitate and stare at Nick for second longer before nodding a dismissal and going back into his office.

'Wonder if he wanted to come with us?' Hank said as they walked to the truck. 'I think he likes getting out now and again and he's been at his desk longer then we have.'

'Well, he can be useful. Remember the human organ traders?'

Renard had probably saved their lives when he shot the man who'd pulled a gun on the detectives knocking on the trailer door.

The drive out was quite.

'You worried this is a bunch of wesen?' Hank got straight to the point.

'You're not?' Nick asked.

'It does cross my mind now and again.'

Nick remained silent.

'Yeah, okay, I'm still thinking about it nearly all the time. I mean, what percentage of Portland are wesen? We seem to get a lot of cases involving them. Is that just because there is a lot of them or because are they more likely to be involved for what ever reason? How do we sort all this out?'

'Don't have all the answers, Hank. I'm still learning about all this stuff as well.'

Hank glanced at Nick several times but he didn't seem interested in saying much else. Hank thought he looked tired and wondered how much extra work he did with all this 'Grimm' thing he had going. It wasn't like he had much back-up with any work involving the wesen. Hank wanted to know more, but as Nick had just said, it wasn't like he knew all the answers either.

They arrived and reported in and then took a moment to look and listen.

This area had access to one of the many forest trails, but the car-park held more than the expected number of cars for a weekday. No tormented sounds of either animals or humans could be heard which was good, but there were some strange marks on the ground leading into the forest which had the detectives look at each other, check their guns and then follow them into the trees.

The walk was pleasant and rather relaxing. It wasn't raining, the ground was firm and the air had just a nip to it so walking quickly didn't break a sweat. Even given that they were investigating an unknown situation didn't stop some of the tension leaching out of the detectives. Unfortunately it all came back when they heard a soft moan and followed the sound to a clearing just off the trail.

They stopped at the edge and tried to make sense of what was in front of them. Nick's first thought was that it was a bunch of wesen but even as it went through his mind he noted details that didn't quite fit. Namely, he'd never seen or read anything about giant pink rabbits, sparkly cats and...what the...

'I need to bleach my brain, delete what I'm seeing or something.'

'Yeah.' Hank agreed. 'Suddenly wesen woging doesn't seem so bad. I mean, that's just them being them but this ain't right.'

'What do we do? This probably counts as public indecency but can you imagine the ribbing we'd get at the station if we brought this lot in?'

'Oh yeah. Well let's see what they've got to say for themselves. POLICE.'

Hank's yell brought the attention of everyone in the clearing to them, though due to the masks they couldn't gauge their reactions.

'All right people, make yourselves decent, masks off and line up here.'

There was a general shuffling around until there was a line up of rather red faced, college-age kids. Nick wondered if they were red because of embarrassment or just because of the activity they had been partaking of. Nick hoped he wasn't blushing himself and not for the first time damned his fair skin.

'Anyone care to explain why you're doing this here rather than somewhere private?' Hank asked

There was silence, some more shuffling and avoidance of eye contact until someone mumbled 'It was a dare.'

Nick and Hank glanced at each other and moved away to confer quietly.

'I say we run their names and if they don't have anything against them already, give them a verbal warning.' Nick said. 'Hopefully getting caught by the police will put them off doing something like this in the future. Or at least doing it out in the open.'

'I'll go with that.' Hank turned back to the kids. 'Right, I want all your names and dates of birth and then everyone is to go back to the car-park and wait there.'

Hank led the way back with Nick bringing up the rear to keep an eye on them. Once there, Hank went to the truck and ran all the names given while Nick asked to their drivers licence which were all with their normal clothes.

Nick didn't know who was more relieved, him and Hank or the kids, when it turned out none had any previous contact with the police. They gave them a stern telling off and let them go.

The drive back was even more quiet then the drive there. Nick fell asleep and Hank remembered his earlier thoughts about how Nick was probably doing two full time jobs. More than two full time jobs even. They could work long hours when on a case and, if the wesen population was huge, he could be trying to do the job of several hundred police officers all on his own on top of that. Hank tried not to think that Nick was also judge and executioner as well. He had enough to take on board as it was.

Hank pulled into his usual parking space at the station and wondered if Nick would be okay driving home. A knock on his window made him jump but he bit back the swear words when he noticed it was Captain Renard. Rather than rolling down the window, he slipped out and carefully closed the door.

'How did it go?' Renard asked. He didn't comment on his sleeping partner.

'Just some kids dressed up and messing about.' Hank said. That was going to be about as much information as his report was going to have as well. Sometimes you could just have too much information.

Renard nodded but continued to stare at Hank.

'Anything you need us to do, Captain?' Hank was glad Nick was asleep because although he was tougher than he looked, he was often underestimated by the perps, he was sometimes prone to blushing. Hank didn't want the Captain to turn his own impressive interrogation techniques on them to get the details they were busy trying to forget themselves.

'No, get yourselves home. You giving Nick a lift?'

Captain Renard took care of his people so his question wasn't unusual and he was fair so Hank wasn't worried about favouritism, but sometimes he noticed the weight of Renard's attention focused on Nick more than anyone else. He wasn't sure what to make of it yet.

'I'll wake him and see what he says. Knowing Nick he'll say he'll be fine.'

Renard smiled at that. 'Paperwork can wait until tomorrow, go home' he said, and walked back into the station.

Hank wondered why he'd been out in the car-park if he hadn't been going home himself but his thought was cut off as Nick woke up. He passed on the message and as predicted, Nick said he was all right driving home.

'See you tomorrow,' Nick said in parting. 'Hope we don't get anything too weird, whether it's human or wesen.'

Yeah, Hank thought as he drove home, this wesen thing was really weird but humans still held the number one slot on weirdness.


End file.
